When Tamara entered her house, the foyer seemed like a tomb and the hallway beyond like some long road yet to be traversed. In many ways she knew she was right. The first door on the right was her daughter’s room, and the one beyond that was her son’s. Thank God they’d slept in. Soon, when they stirred awake, she would have to tell them.
Tell them that their father was, for all intents and purposes, gone.
That’s the word she’d come up with on the drive here: “gone.”
It was better than “dead,” and oddly, probably better than the truth.
Already the reality of what she’d seen and experienced was beginning to fade. Had she really seen an angel? Had he really said that Kyle was in hell now? Had he actually said he was going after him? Was that even possible?
She knew it was true, all of it, but still. Perhaps it was part of being human: the doubting, the disbelief, the tendency towards denial.
But then she thought of Detective Villa’s face, and all her doubts were jarred loose and smashed to the floor.
He’d volunteered to go after her husband. Volunteered, with all the faith in the world etched into the wrinkles of his worn and handsome face, to go to hell. He’d actually done that. That hadn’t been a dream. It hadn’t been a fantasy.
So how dare she stand here now in her lovely home and allow herself to doubt any of it.
The house was quiet, a dull light pushing at the windows in the kitchen. On her drive home she’d been numb, the seat belt pulled tightly across her chest and stomach, her mind just as restrained. Each time she imagined this moment, of what she would say to the kids and Trudy, she’d forced herself instead to just listen to the traffic around her, or the radio, which she kept on low as a meager distraction.
Anything was better than listening to that voice inside of herself that was telling her she had to get on now with things, one way or another.
As she stepped quietly from the foyer and into the hall, she walked on the balls of her feet. Once at Janie’s door, she peeked in and saw her little girl’s sleeping face, turned sideways against her pillow, her lips pursed and her long eyelashes lying on her cheeks. She was breathing softly, lost in her dreams.
Stay there, honey. For as long as you can. Because…
Tamara thought of Kyle and her chest tightened.
Because I can’t protect you from the nightmare of what’s happened when you awake.
She didn’t want to walk to Seth’s room, didn’t want to see his little body wrapped up like a burrito in his sheets, his arms tucked in tight, not entirely unlike the way he used to sleep as an infant.
How do you tell your little boy that his father isn’t coming home?
The door of his room was wide open, and he was pretty much just as expected, but his head was jammed at an odd angle. There would be a crick in his neck for sure when he awoke. Normally she would’ve gone in and readjusted him, but the thought of waking him was too much.
All of it was too much.
Trudy’s whisper startled her. “Hey? Any luck?”
Her best friend looked funny standing there in one of Tamara’s robes, her hair askew and her face clear of makeup, heavy bags beneath her eyes as she tried her best to cast a smile.
“You look like shit,” Tamara whispered back weakly, trying to be funny but instead coming off melancholy.
Trudy chuckled anyway, then hugged her and walked her to the living room, where they sat down.
“So?” Trudy prodded.
Tamara thought of Detective Parker. As far as she knew, he was holding up his end of the lie, so she would too.
“He was there but then… gone.” It was the truth. Mostly.
“Gone?” Trudy asked, perplexed. “Do you know where?”
Biting at the corner of her mouth, Tamara answered. “No.” Now that was a lie for sure.
“Well, I mean, what happened?”
Tamara thought things through for a moment, and when she responded she realized that it was with a natural ease and a convincing tone. There was a certain amount that Trudy and everyone else would hear on the news. She had to just try to stay within those lines.
“I got there right when those detectives did.”
“No shit! So you were right? He was going to see that woman?”
Tamara nodded with a yawn, as if she didn’t know that the “woman” in question had actually tried to kill her husband.
“Then what?”
“Well. Then it got weird.” Tamara shook her head at the recollection, and then continued. “We got to her home and they made me wait out front. I mean, we literally almost pulled into the driveway at the same damn time. I was out front trying to work up the courage to knock on the door. I mean, it was almost nine, when here they come. They were pissed at me and told me to stay put. Then one of them goes in through the front door, I guess it was partway open, while the other one goes around to cover the back of the house.”
“Was Kyle inside?”
“He must’ve been. They moved towards the house like they knew something I didn’t, which was totally possible, I guess.”
“So…”
Tamara raised her eyebrows. “So then Detective Villa, the Latin cop, went in the front. There was screaming, yelling… shit was getting broken, like there was a fight of some kind.”
“What?! Was Kyle’s ex-girlfriend in the house? Or her family?”
“Evidently not.”
“So what the hell? Was Kyle hiding out inside? That’s just creepy.”
Oh. If only you knew what creepy really was, Tamara thought, remembering the little girl in the bathroom at the rest stop crawling under the toilet stall. Sighing, she continued, “So I’m waiting for a gunshot or something when the sounds all stop, and the next thing I know the cop that went around back, Detective Parker, he comes running around front to ask if I’ve seen anything.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I know. Kyle must’ve broken away and ran? I dunno. Shit. Cop cars started pulling up all over the place. Then it got confusing, but best I can guess is that Detective Villa chased after him.”
“Did he catch him?”
Oh God. I hope so. Again Tamara bit her tongue before answering, “We don’t know. I mean. Obviously not, because…”
An odd silence filled the living room as Tamara struggled to finish.
Trudy reached out and grabbed Tamara’s hand. “Tam? What happened?”
It was hard to lie to your best friend, especially when you’d promised never to do it again only a few days before. Still. Detective Parker was right. The truth would only convince Trudy and everyone else that Tamara was neck-deep in a nervous breakdown, and who knew what that meant for the kids, or the house, or her career now, as the sole earner of the family. No. There was no other choice. “They’re missing.”
Trudy blinked hard, twice, and then cocked her head to the side as a look of confusion spilled across her face. “What?”
“Yeah. I know. It sounds crazy, but they’re both missing now.”
“And?”
“The house was in a wooded part of Monterey. He must’ve chased Kyle into the woods, and who knows what happened after that.”
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Do they think Kyle killed him? Out in the woods, I mean?”
“I don’t care what they think,” Tamara said with a defiant shrug, “Kyle hasn’t killed anyone.”
“Jesus. This is just a whole ’nother level of insane now. All of it.”
“I know.”
“First the girl, the one at the hotel, and now this? Tamara, if he’s flipped this bad you gotta cut him loose.”
“Trudy… please.”
“No. Bullshit, Tamara. I mean it. If he’s killed a cop now? He’s obviously lost his freakin’ mind, and you have to protect yourself and the kids.”
Trudy’s concern was so deep that it was heartbreaking. Tamara felt crushed. She tried to lessen the weight of her lies with a half-truth or two.
“Listen, we don’t know what really happened. We should wait and—”
Tamara noticed, as the light outside began to brighten, that the mid-morning sun beyond the clouds was trying to break through, but instead of casting the world in a golden glow, the light was… gray.
She thought of him instantly: The Gray Man. An angel. A real angel. A distraught angel. Gone to save her husband.
Trudy scooted closer to her, keeping her voice hushed as she spoke. “Listen, Tam, I’ve been trying to be supportive in all of this. Non-judgmental, I mean. Kyle was a great guy. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but now, enough’s enough.”
Tamara lowered her head. “Trudy. The police are looking for them both. I don’t know what else to say.”
Then it was like something in her told her to stop talking. She waited, hoping that her friend would give her some space.
Trudy sighed heavily. “Okay. Later. You want me to make some coffee?”
Tamara didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Please.”
Tamara sat in the stillness of the living room, looking around, something every five feet reminding her of Kyle: a picture, one of his favorite books, the autographed football over the entertainment unit.
This room, the whole home… was one memory of Kyle after another, and they hurt. She wiped at her eyes and realized with no small sense of dread that all of this was the easy part.
The kids would wake up soon, and that’s when things would get hard.
It dawned on her that hell could be found in a lot of places.
And her home, now, was going to be one of them.
As Parker drove down the highway, his hands clenching the wheel tightly despite the exhaustion that had crept into every corner of his body, he could think of only one thing: Napoleon’s face, twelve hours earlier.
It was a face of complete faith, framed with resolve.
He’d volunteered for something completely unfathomable, and surrendered his life over to… someone… who Parker supposed was an angel of some kind. At least that’s what Tamara Fasano kept saying he was, under her breath, just before Monterey PD followed standard procedure and separated her and Parker when they realized they had a problem on their hands: not only a fugitive on the loose in their lovely little suburb, the ever-elusive Kyle Fasano, but now a missing cop as well.
It hadn’t taken long for backup units to be called in, from Carmel to the south and Watsonville to the north, to help search the woods around the Brasco residence. A helicopter swooped in, its spotlight drawing a search pattern over treetops that were still eerily outlined by moonlight. Before long the lights in the windows of neighboring residences came on, one by one, as people awoke to a manhunt that was really all for naught.
Through it all Parker stood with the watch commander at the top of the driveway and played along, occasionally glancing over at Tamara as she no doubt answered the same questions he was being asked, over and over. He realized that the one thing they both had going in their favor that night, indeed the one thing that was like the light-footed dance partner to their heavy-footed story, was the fact that they were both genuinely in shock.
You can’t fake shock. Parker learned that his first month on foot patrol. People try all the time, but the look of fake shock on a person’s face is a mask that says one thing: guilty. Be it of hiding a baggie of pot in their sock or of stabbing a rival gang member in the neck. Fake shock was a universal giveaway.
But he remembered now how, whenever he had glanced Tamara’s way, no matter which officer she was speaking to, she looked to be genuinely in shock, almost to the point of appearing ill.
Why shouldn’t she be? She believed more than Parker that her husband had been dragged to hell.
She believed it as much as Napoleon.
Parker shook his head. It was madness. All of it. But it had happened, right before his very eyes, and there was simply no denying it. And now, right out there on the fringes of his mind, he could feel his concept of reality beginning to tear, taut threads of perception snapping sharply, one at a time.
Because if hell was real, then so was heaven.
And if heaven was real, then so too were a lot of ideas and beliefs that would call his lifestyle into question, especially the things he’d done.
Done over there, in the hills and mountains of Afghanistan. Especially to that little blue-eyed Taliban boy, who never saw it coming. Because he wasn’t looking and because, well, he most likely was trying to get away. Would’ve, as a matter of fact, if Parker had let him. But Parker hadn’t. No. No. No. That just wasn’t gonna happen.
Payback’s a bitch, my man.
Except he was a boy, not a man, probably no more than sixteen. Probably died a virgin. Probably died wishing he could have lived a little longer. Maybe to at least seventeen.
The car was cave-silent. The windows were up despite the fact it was a sunny day outside because, no matter how hard he tried, Parker couldn’t stop shivering. The images now in his mind, of the boy, having pushed out the image of Napoleon’s face, only made the shivering worse.
Monterey PD had released him to Klink and Murillo’s custody, both of whom were pissed that they’d been forced to drive up and babysit him. Parker figured the captain was just playing it safe, or covering bases that Parker was just too tired to see right now.
It was clear that neither he nor Mrs. Fasano were suspects in anything. Their stories had been baffling, but they evidently matched up enough to let things go, at least for the time being. But Parker knew that once he was given a chance to get it together he would be called in to the station house, where there was going to be a lot more questions, by the captain and the lieutenant, and shit, probably the chief of police himself.
The department was no doubt on the verge of burning to the ground. Not only had Caitlyn Hall’s presumed murderer escaped, but now one of the cops who had gone after him was missing too. It was a PR disaster, and heads would roll for sure.
Napoleon had tried to warn Parker to get off the case. Back in San Diego he told him that they were practically lambs to the slaughter. But Parker refused. The case might’ve been a clusterfuck of circles that overlapped or never closed, but that was no excuse for giving up. You stuck by your partner. If nothing else, war had taught Parker that, right or wrong, easy or hard, you hold the line.
Even if that line causes you to kill.
Jesus.
He thought about that word: a name, a nice guy, maybe even a prophet or whatever. But Son of God? Silly stuff.
His unit commander, Ortega, had tried to tell Parker many times of one salvation or another, quoting as he did from his little pocket Bible. Parker was mostly indignant, finding Ortega’s audacity of hope in a place of constant death, where even the air you breathed was tinged with the taste of hate, almost repugnant. After the blue-eyed boy, though, Ortega had given up.
Parker swallowed hard and wondered if Napoleon had gone off to visit the very place Parker himself was destined for, someday.
A white Nissan pulled aggressively around his car and whipped in front of him, having raced out into the opposite lane to beat on-coming traffic. Parker realized he’d zoned out and was only driving at 40 mph in the fast lane.
Blinking hard, he accelerated the car back up to seventy and tried to get his mind off the subject.
Off the subject of hell.
Off the memories off stupid Ortega and his crazy notions of an afterlife, of a peaceful place called heaven where you walked on streets of gold and hung out with a God who looked like Santa and spoke like Morgan Freeman.
But each time he tried, there it was again: Napoleon’s face.
So sure of where he was going, to a place that should’ve had him filled with fear.
But no.
Instead his face wore the resolve of a man going into the unknown, but not going there alone and, most assuredly, not going there without a belief in something else.
A belief in heaven. A belief in God.
It was madness. All of it. At least it used to be.
Now it was time, Parker knew, to start coming to grips with the fact that there was, indeed, an afterlife. And knowing this, far from making things easier, it only made them harder.
In all the living and the dying that went on in the world each and every day, his number could be called next at any moment.
Which meant he had to be ready.
He eased his grip on the wheel and lowered the window, feeling the warm desert air. The scent of Joshua trees spilled into the car as Parker swallowed hard and figured it was time to just get to it. So, for the first time in his life, he prayed.
Having no real exposure to religion growing up, he had no idea how he was meant to do it. So he just talked to God as if he were Morgan Freeman.
And hoped He would understand.